Sunflowers at days end

They say you have to suffer for your Art, and here is a prime example!
Who would have known that sunflower fields had to have many bee hives to pollinate all those flowers, and who would have known to carry a bee sting antidote in the car?
I do now... Ouch! I was stung on the palm of my thankfully left hand, which blew up to twice it's size!
Now I carry a small pot of Bicarb powder in the glove compartment, next to my photo filters!

Here is a square crop with a very simple, yet effective, one texture combo use, later zapped up in Nik color Effex Pro 3.
I simply upped the color brightness, the effect was like turning on a light switch!

Lyme Fossil - Soft Light @ 100%
Nic Color Pro 3 - Color brightness tweak.

Spring Painterly Pack

40 Large Textures (38 square and two huge rectangles) for only

$40

Summer Painterly Pack

36 large textures for only $40

Complete Flypaper Package

Tex Box 1, Tex box 2, Fly Edges, Summer Painterly & Spring Painterly

$180

Flypaper Triple Combo Deal
$100 for Tex Box One and Two and the Fly Edges

Combo Pack Offer

Only $65 for Tex Box One and  Tex Box Two

Fly Edges Pack

Only $40

See all our packs and deals on one Page

Three Pears

It's no secret that I'm a big fan of pears! They're such photogenic fruit,
I especially love Bosc pears with their elegant long form and stems.
The other day when I was looking a photo to process I came across this one taken a couple of years ago and rejected at the time because it was a little flat looking.
With the additon of textures and some wonderful Nik filters, I think I've added drama and depth. I can't rave enough about the Nik filters, they're wonderfully versatile and so easy to use and work so well when used with our textures.
Okay the processing...
Catacomb Frieze @ multiply 100% (masked a little off the focus areas)
Pantheon Stone @ Overlay 33% masked as above
Villa Adriana @ overlay 27%
Nik filter Darken lighten centre (from Color Efex pro)
Nik Tonal Contrast (from Color Efex pro)

And it was done!
See it a little bigger on Flickr

Spring Painterly Pack

40 Large Textures (38 square and two huge rectangles) for only

$40

Summer Painterly Pack

36 large textures for only $40

Complete Flypaper Package

Tex Box 1, Tex box 2, Fly Edges, Summer Painterly & Spring Painterly

$180

Flypaper Triple Combo Deal
$100 for Tex Box One and Two and the Fly Edges

Combo Pack Offer

Only $65 for Tex Box One and  Tex Box Two

Fly Edges Pack

Only $40

See all our packs and deals on one Page

empty vessels

Here's another still life I threw together.
The tall antique glass vase is probably a french apothecary jar and would have had a big cork stopper, its one of a pair that Martine and I bought from an outdoor flea-market, here in the south of France.
The tiny cracked olive oil decanter and stopper I found on our local communal bins and the small vase came with my little French house!

Its no secret we've recently been wowed and bowed over by Nik processing, and this is my first HDR Pro Efex and Color Efex Pro 3.0 Nik combo image. We're often asked how we manage to get brighter pictures after texturing, and often we cant say because we used our photoshop curves and color tweaks.
But now we've found this great set of enhancement programs we should be able to fill in more gaps that until now have missing from our past recipe blogs.

In the above before and after version I used two layers of a black and white HDR Nik enhancement, just to beef the contrast as the room was fairly dark. Then I applied several Flypaper layers on top. The final layer I'm happy to say is Sisley, probably the most difficult, yet I find, endlessly adaptable texture we've ever made!

If you don't yet own Nik programs, you can simply click the side buttons for a 2 week trial period, we promise you'll not regret downloading these easy to use Photoshop plug-in's!
Also, just for our US based readers, there is a fabulous one-off Nik sale which ends this Friday 15th July - So Hurry!:-D

B/W Nik HDR copy Normal @ 17%
B/W Nik HDR copy Soft Light @ 30%
Opal - Overlay @ 40%
Paysage Linge - Soft Light @ 65%
Sisley - Pin Light @ 9% (flipped vertically and brushed from table top)

The final cleaned-up published version of this image was given a slight treatment of Glamor Glow from Color Efex Pro 3.0 just to soften the hard HDR edges.
See the final, bigger version on Flickr

Spring Painterly Pack

40 Large Textures (38 square and two huge rectangles) for only

$40

Summer Painterly Pack

36 large textures for only $40

Complete Flypaper Package

Tex Box 1, Tex box 2, Fly Edges, Summer Painterly & Spring Painterly

$180

Flypaper Triple Combo Deal
$100 for Tex Box One and Two and the Fly Edges

Combo Pack Offer

Only $65 for Tex Box One and  Tex Box Two

Fly Edges Pack

Only $40

See all our packs and deals on one Page

Jim Zuckerman Nik ebook

Back in the new year we supplied our writer friend Jim Zuckerman with complimentary copies of our textures, updating him with the spring pack as it was launched.
Jim has finally furnished us with a copy of his lavishly illustrated ebook We were delighted to see he has used several fly textures as examples of colour mixing and blending with this superb new Nik Software!
We've now tried this Nik program and we absolutely love it!
"But what does it do" - I hear you asking?
Imagine all the Photoshop actions you could ever wish for all in one Photoshop plug-in filter! Its 64 Bits too, so you don't get that nasty banding you normally get with even the most expensive actions.
We'll talk loads more about all the fabulous Nik software in upcoming blog postings with our usual before and after mouse-overs, but for now here's the science bit from our Nik guru!

About the Book
Nik Software makes many essential Photoshop plug-in filters that enhance and embellish your images, and this ebook explains how to get the most out of these tools. Think of this as an idea book.
It is not a how-to manual for each filter in Nik’s programs; rather, Jim explains in his easy-to-understand manner of writing how you can produce remarkably creative imagery using his favorite Nik Software filters. His beautiful examples will inspire you for sure, and with his guidance you will learn to think outside the box in applying these techniques to images that are already in your files waiting to be rediscovered.

To purchase downloads of Jim's lavishly illustrated ebook simply press any of the blue ebook links in this feature!